Myth Library · Fable Of Death And Attachment To Life
The Old Man Calls Thanatos
1 source witness · 1 source-scoped variant · reviewed 2026-08-30
An exhausted old man summons Death, then asks Thanatos only to help lift his burden.
Canonical narrative
An old man cuts wood and carries it along a long road. The burden and the distance wear him down. He sets the load aside and calls for Thanatos.
Death appears. He asks why the old man summoned him. Faced with the figure he had invoked, the traveler does not ask to be taken. He asks Thanatos to lift the bundle of wood.
The fable turns on that swift reversal. Weariness can make death sound desirable at a distance, but the arrival of Death reveals the old man’s attachment to life. Thanatos does not threaten, bargain, or deceive. He comes when called, asks the reason, and receives an answer that chooses labor and continued life.
Chambry’s Greek text preserves the tale as number 78, corresponding to Perry 60. The fable corpus is anonymous and composite, so the narrative is not assigned to an archaic historical Aesop or given a narrow ancient date.
Episodes in this myth
Episode 1
The Old Man Calls Death
Exhausted by the road and the load of cut wood, the old man lays it down and summons Thanatos.
Episode 2
Help with the Burden
When Death appears and asks why he was called, the old man asks him to lift the load.
Participants and roles
Thanatos
appears when the exhausted traveler calls Death and asks why he has been summoned
The old man
calls Death under the weight of cut wood, then asks only for help lifting the load
Source-scoped variants
The burden lifted, not life ended
An old man summons Death during exhaustion, but when Death appears he asks only for help raising the bundle of wood.
What differs: The fable offers a brief encounter and moral about attachment to life; it gives no genealogy, weapon, cult place, or underworld journey.
Modern Classical Scholarship · Ancient GreeceSource witnesses
EXPLICIT PRIMARY · Reviewed
Aesopi Fabulae
Anonymous Greek fable tradition; edited by Émile Chambry; digital edition by Chloé Laruelle and Sorbonne Université · 2019
Entry Aesopi Fabulae · Section Chambry 78 = Perry 60, Γέρων καὶ θάνατος · RecordUrl https://obtic.huma-num.fr/obvil-web/corpus/fabula-numerica/anonymes_chambry
Chambry 78 preserves the Greek fable; its anonymous transmission does not secure an archaic date or historical Aesop authorship.
Open reviewed source